"What, lord?" said he. "There is tired you are now! How may I serve you? Please you share the shelter of my roof till evening!" "Nay, not so," Mogneid replied, "I am in haste to reach my journey's end. Give us to drink, sir, I pray you--beer, milk, or water--what you will--anything! We are dried up with this dust! And tell me, if you can, how far hence dwells Gwrtheyrn the King?" Without waiting to answer, the old man hobbled away, and returned a few minutes later with a big stone pitcher and two little cups of horn. "Alack, my friend," he grumbled, "they have taken all the beer. They are all gone to mow the hay, look you, my son and the women! and I am left to milk the cows and tend the livestock. Sore thing it is that old age comes so soon! Well, lord, if ye will not stay to cleanse your feet and enter my dwelling, let us at least converse in the shade. Here is new milk, that quenches thirst." He led Mogneid and his four serving-men beneath the boughs of a great hawthorn-tree, the only ornament of his straw-littered, pig-frequented entrance-yard. "Seek ye King Gwrtheyrn?" He dropped thankfully on to a low seat surrounding the tree trunk, and Mogneid sat down beside him, quaffed at the creamy liquor, and wiped the dust and sweat from his countenance. The traveller was a middle-aged man, thin and muscular, with a dark grizzled beard, and vague-looking light blue eyes that missed sight of nothing that went on around him. Upon the backs of his hands was tattooed a mystic design of circles interlaced. "I am from the land of Dyfed, reverend sir," he answered, "and I travel to the court of Gwrtheyrn son of Guitaul, lord of Ewyas, of Erging, and of Caer Glouwy. My folk were somewhat akin to his, many a generation ago, and there is talk of a marriage between my niece and a lord of Gwent who follows King Gwrtheyrn. If I mistake not greatly, I am now not very far from my kinsman's palace."